Ecclestone: Outrage 'probably my fault'

LONDON -- Formula One boss Bernie Ecclestone dismissed calls for his resignation Monday in the wake of his praise for Adolf Hitler.

Ecclestone, F1's commercial rights holder, has come under fire from Jewish groups and British politicians following an interview published Saturday in The Times of London during which he said democracy wasn't effective and singled out Hitler as a strong leader.

Among those who have expressed outrage over Ecclestone's remarks is Ronald Lauder, president of the World Jewish Congress.

The World Jewish Congress has called for the resignation of Formula One's Bernie Ecclestone after his comments on Hitler. AP Photo/Alastair Grant

Lauder said someone with Ecclestone's views should not be allowed to run such an important and popular racing series.

But Ecclestone said in a telephone interview with The Associated Press that "I think the people who are saying that [I should resign] haven't got the power to say these things."

If the WJC is influential, he said, "it's a pity they didn't sort the banks out." Asked to elaborate, Ecclestone said, "They have a lot of influence everywhere."

As a result of Ecclestone's earlier comments, the governor of Germany's Baden-Wuerttemberg state, Guenther Oettinger, canceled their planned meeting at this weekend's German Grand Prix.

Ecclestone said he was not aware of that.

"I think I'm due to be meeting him at 12 o'clock on Sunday -- nobody has told me to the contrary," he said.

Ecclestone said he had not intended to invoke Hitler's name in the interview with the Times. He acknowledged that it "doesn't help" that he is praising Hitler a little over a year since Max Mosley, president of F1's governing body, took a British tabloid to court after being accused of being involved in a Nazi-themed sadomasochistic orgy.

Mosley, the son of the late Oswald Mosley, Britain's best-known fascist politician in the 1930s, won the privacy suit. The judge in that case found no evidence that Mosley's encounter with five women was intended to be an enactment of Nazi behavior.

"It's probably my fault in that I got dragged into something I wasn't supposed to discuss -- we got out of F1 into something else," Ecclestone said.

However, Ecclestone said he does not regret praising Hitler's leadership "except as usual things were taken a little bit wrong."

"Between '32 and '38 he took a country that was bankrupt and made it a reasonably strong power in Europe, but after that the guy obviously is a lunatic," Ecclestone said.

Hitler's regime, responsible for the Nazi genocide of 6 million Jews, is known to have opened concentration camps years before the outbreak of World War II in 1939.

"The trouble with politicians and democracy is they all the time have to compromise, they can't do what they want to do because there is somebody in opposition. It certainly takes a lot longer to do something," Ecclestone said.

"I regret that it didn't come out like that, upsetting people is the last thing I wanted to do, obviously."